You Dismantle Me
by HopefulVoice
Summary: It only occurs to her after a few more minutes of silence that he's been watching her. Turning slightly, she raises an eyebrow. He shrugs, and something passes between the two of them. There's always been an endless possibility in the strange, unspoken dialogue that they share with each other.


**A/N:** So... this is set in some unknown time in the future, where Liz is no longer with Tom and Red is no longer on the run. I'm still trying to get a handle on these characters, so I'd love to hear what you think. Thanks for reading :].

* * *

It's already six o'clock.

Eventually, she settles herself at the far end of the Impressionist section between the Monet and the Renoir with her gaze lingering around in a rare display of childlike fascination. She grasps the colors, the fortitude of all those quiet desires that she knows she's forgotten in part, a lame effort to protect herself from conversations she'd rather not have. It's become much more precarious now, the enigmatic side of her personality serving much more as a vulnerability than a recourse of action.

The steps echoing down the hall alert her and she checks her watch again without thinking. Red dragged her to the museum under the guise of potential information about the blacklist's latest addition: Andrew Huffman, simply known as The Curator in Red's world. She's tired. He's tired. If anything, the two of them were still recovering from the viciously draining case that had dominated the weeks prior.

"Anything?"

He comes into view, his eyes taking everything in sharply. "No."

The lead had been a long-shot, at best, but she'd still hoped for _something_. She sighs. The flight into Philadelphia had been rough— and this wasn't helping as it is. He sits next to her on the bench and she shifts for room, the silence filling the niche that they were in. The two of them are quiet, soft sounds only slipping when a passing group or couple enters the room. She's aware of a security guard watching them from a corner, but neither of them makes a mention.

"Ressler called," she offers quietly.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Her gaze lingers at the curve of the wall, on the few pieces of Degas that the museum had. A soft smile comes out of nowhere, but then again, there are some reactions to nostalgia that even she can't help. The drifting colors and the slender forms of the dancer stir memories of ballet school, when she was younger.

They are nothing more than odd memories, memories of laughter and the foregoing innocence that everybody eventually loses, as they grow older. These are the memories that scare her the most, an effortless drifting into a past that she's just too terrified of sharing. She's trusting less and less.

It only occurs to her after a few more minutes of silence that he's been watching her. Turning slightly, she raises an eyebrow. He shrugs, and something passes between the two of them. There's always been an endless possibility in the strange, unspoken dialogue that they share with each other. She never thinks much of it and perhaps it's best this way.

He shifts. "The weather is even worse than earlier."

It's an offer of something, what she can't be entirely sure of. She can't trust the favorability of her instincts regarding him. It means entirely too little and too much at the same time.

"We don't have hotel reservations for an overnight stay."

He looks away. "Yes, we do."

Her eyes widen and she regards him with a dangerous surprise, an unwavering honesty. He stares and she shakes her head, unable to give him any other reaction than this. He leans forward as if he's more than aware of what's behind her gaze.

"The flight here was unfortunate enough," he offers. "You look like hell, Lizzie. No way was I letting you drive back if we couldn't fly."

"You remain as charming as ever."

"I try."

She reaches into her jacket pocket, pulling out a hair tie and sweeping her hair into a ponytail. She leans back against the bench, her palms flattening against the cool metal and her gaze beginning to wander again. She watches as an art student drifts into the room, stumbling slightly because of his lack of his attention to the natural surroundings. His eyes are wide, fascinated, and the room suddenly fills with the scratching of his pencil to the large hulk of notebook paper in his hands.

Red is watching her. And she smiles, smiles, and still smiles. It's the strangest thing, she muses, that at this moment, it seems so easy. Too easy.

"What?"

He stares at her in his quiet, knowing way before answering. "You want to look around?"

Red is watching her and his gaze falls to a spectrum of the unreadable. The assertion of something being there, between them, instead of space. She watches him with a mix of emotions, wariness at the forefront because it's just about the only thing she can find herself seeking reassurance in. Change is good. Change is scary. But between them, here, it's unpredictable.

Her reply is tentative. "Can we?"

He nods.

* * *

They stop in front of a Salvador Dali, towards their way out.

For the most part, it's been a relatively quiet couple of hours. She's wandered, careful in some places and lost in others— he's spent the entire time watching her, taking her in like this. It's frightening and she tries not to think of the possibility of exposing something to him.

"Remember," he murmurs, coming to stand beside her, "the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."

Her snort echoes in long hallway dedicated to the Surrealism movement, her gaze never tearing away from the Dali. Her fascination lingers on the dream coloring, the expression of curves and the lighting. It strikes her as odd that her memories, out of all things, are coming out now. For the feast of his sight.

A smile seems to curl onto her lips. "John Ruskin. How appropriate for you."

He shrugs and they turn, making their way to the elevators. He pushes the button, turning to face her. He studies her, the question falling from his lips in a blatant display of his curiosity.

"You read _T__he Stones of Venice_?"

She yawns, playing with the buttons of her jacket. Turns of conversation seem to haunt her the most, the chance of possibility endlessly mocking her. She doesn't know about him.

"Yeah," she answers. "Twice."

"Figures."

She raises an eyebrow. "What's that suppose to mean?"

His fingers start to tap against his thigh as they enter the elevator, a lead-in to two things. The oddness of a potential conversation. She wonders if the motion is a nervous habit of his, a prelude to certain reactions. And something else, something that shouldn't be there. Or so she thinks.

He shakes his head, leaning against the corner of the elevator. "You and your affinity for the romanticism of things."

"Ruskin was a Victorian, Red."

"I know," he replies. He watches her carefully. "And while most of them claimed to be devotees of progress, the vast majority of them clung to the romanticism of the past. Tennyson. Browning."

She doesn't voice it, but she can feel it. The rise of the interest of this discussion; a discussion outside the superficial nature of the boundaries they've set. The distance that they both cling to seems to be fading. She doesn't answer the dig, doesn't deem it necessary. Instead she gives into the interest of the conversation.

She studies him, her lips curling slightly in amusement. "You're a Victorian."

"You're insulting me." But his lips curl too.

"Think of it as an amused compliment."

He lets out a bark of laughter. "Indulge me then."

She's quiet here, wondering what exactly is striving to present itself between the two of them. She doesn't understand it and, for once, he doesn't seem to understand it either. She's glad. It puts the two of them on equal footing, keeps them on the same page.

"You seek nothing more than the outweighing comforts of modernity," she murmurs finally, ignoring his raised eyebrow. "While you stretch here and there, you depend solely of the objective rationalizations that progress provides for you. Subjectivity fascinates you from time to time, but even that is a rarity. You question when it's necessary. You still never stretch beyond the limitations, only when it suits your personal needs."

He steps closer, his fingers tapping continuously against his thigh. "So I'm a Victorian."

"You're a Victorian. Not completely a Victorian, but one nonetheless— you asked, Red. Don't look at me like that."

He grins, the rare presence of his true smile startling to her. The moments, these moments, have always been fragmented. Easy to trust, but the failure always hits just as fast. She sighs and looks away as they enter the parking lot, tossing him the keys to the rental.

Even the makings of a real conversation are daunting.

* * *

She doesn't bother hiding her amusement when they stop in the parking lot of a bookstore.

When she turns to him, he shrugs and gives some excuse about needing to think. That and, for now, all they can do is wait and see what information the FBI manages to gather about their target. So she steps out of the car and he follows as they settle into a comfortable line of walking.

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

She smirks, masking her genuine surprise at the strange willingness to open up to her like this. Or was it? If it was one thing that she hated, it was the motions to not trust him. Or trust him and then lose it.

"Hemingway," she murmurs. "And you can't deny you're an Eliot fan either because then you'd be lying."

He chuckles, hints of his own surprise spilling in the wake of his amusement. He opens the door and she follows, trying to remember the last time she was actually in a bookstore for _herself_.

His fingers curl around her wrist when she starts to move towards the new releases. He pulls her another direction and laughs when she ends up glaring at him first.

"Group visit."

"_Goodie_."

He leads her to the fiction section, his fingers sliding from her wrist to her fingers and tugging her into his side. There's a strange intimacy here, natural in feeling and unsystematic in timing. But then again, there is no definite characteristic to their relationship.

She raises an eyebrow. "What are we doing?"

"I want a book," he says simply. "You're keeping me company. Try to contain your excitement, Lizzie."

She makes no move to pull herself from his grasp, her focus on the expanse of books in front of her distracting her for the time being. He gives her another tug forward, towards a selection he wants to see and she rolls her eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You might."

She stops, her brow furrowing. He doesn't look at her, but his fingers uncurl from around her wrists and brush gently against her skin. He keeps his attention forward and she knows, knows that comment is one of _those_— the enigmatic pieces that she's supposed to know how to figure out and can, but he never gives her long enough to try. This is how defense mechanisms are started.

She turns, but doesn't leave his sight— the efforts he makes for predictability is something she has no desire to give him. She can feel him watching and she wonders if they'll ever move past this limbo of indecision.

"You're not helping," he complains from her side.

She raises an eyebrow and graces him with a smirk, picking up a book and scanning the back. He mirrors her smirk when she ignores him, coming to stand at the self she had her back turned towards.

"Poetry."

She turns slightly. "What about it?"

"I'm trying to guess how predictable you are," he counters. "Let's see. Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Shakespeare? Were you the girl who got one of Shakespeare's sonnets and swooned when—"

But he falters when he remembers _who_ would have been giving her sonnets.

She watches him, quietly, and indulges in the strange rhythm that they seem to fall to regardless of the height of what stirs between the two of them. She shakes her head and allows a slow smile curls onto her lips.

"I dreamed," she begins softly, "that you bewitched me into bed and sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane— I think I made you up inside my head."

He says nothing, staring at her in a mix of confusion and curiosity. As if he's finally begotten whatever plagued them before. Indiscretions. Moments.

She shrugs. "I'm going to get a magazine for later."

And she leaves him.

* * *

Her hotel room is quiet.

She has the news on, but she really isn't paying any attention. There are conversations, in passing, in the halls but straining to hear them is a ridiculous impossibility. So she stays in bed, curled to one side with her eyes opened slightly and gaze unfocused.

She tries thinking about the day, the strangeness of it, but can't. Perhaps this is one of those moments where the issue is withstanding and really just doesn't matter in the long run. Moments are moments and they've had plenty of them, doing nothing more than dance around in circles.

She only half-expects the knock on her door.

Shifting off her bed, she smoothes her hands against her sweatpants— bought after the bookstore trip— and moves to the door to open.

"Hello," she greets softly.

Red says nothing in return, leaning against the frame of the door, looking up at her and then looking down.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead," he says, "I lift my lids and all is born again— I think I made you up inside my head."

She laughs because she can't help herself, shaking her head and stepping back slightly. The invitation is there and he only partly acknowledges it, stepping closer but not inside. His curiosity is what needs to be sated first.

So she indulges him. "The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, and arbitrary blackness gallops in— I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead."

His hand reaches for hers and, as if he's quite sure, his fingers start to trace the lines of her palms.

She watches and doesn't falter, but he speaks first. His voice has an almost husky quality to it now. "I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed and sung me moon-struck… kissed me quite insane— I think I made you up inside my head."

Shaking her head, she tugs him inside the room and shuts the door. She turns, ready to start her contribution to the conversation, but his mouth is on hers much faster. His tongue sweeps against her bottom lip and into her mouth, his hands pulling her against him. She thinks she moans or it could've been him—

It doesn't matter.

Breaking away, her lips graze his and she trembles slightly. Her fingers are curled with fistfuls of his shirt and she struggles to regain some control of herself.

She manages. "God topples," she breathes, "from the sky, hell's fires fade— exit seraphim and Satan's men… I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead."

She feels his fingers brush against her hips and suddenly, her mouth finds his and they're kissing again. Somehow they manage to stumble towards the bed, his hands pulling her tank top over her head and tossing it to one side. She's already managed to unbutton his shirt halfway and soon that falls to the floor as well and she can touch him. Skin._  
_

The possibility of skin against skin, the thought alone, it burns even worse when he's here. When she can reach him.

"I," he starts, but then stops because somehow they've made it onto the bed. She straddles his lap and his hands cup the back of her thighs. He watches her, taking in her reactions and she finds herself drifting between comfortable and uncomfortable about being this exposed.

This is true nakedness.

"I fancied you'd return the way you said," he moans as she starts to grind against him. "But I grow old and I forget your name— I think I made you—up inside my head."

Motions now are much simpler. Her sweatpants fall and join the scattered pile of their clothing. His slacks, her underwear and bra, his boxers— everything falls in an erotic mess.

They stare at each other, his cock pressing against her thigh and her fingers smoothing against his chest. For once, instead of being faced with their own mortality, they're being faced with the awareness of possibility. Of what they can have. Of what can be theirs. In a sense, it's always been here— perhaps better explained in stages than anything else. She wonders why, but it's only a moment because she leans forward and kisses him again.

Her kiss is relentless, a punishment and a grasping of self-sacrifice— she's overcome by the need to show and give and take. Everything is so strange and yet it's welcomed. The moment is welcomed.

His hands wrap around her thighs and he lifts her, but never gives her enough time to think or say anything. She arches back when his cock slides slowly inside of her, a low, guttural moan spilling from her lips as she settles against him.

"I— I should have loved _oh a thunderbird_ instead," the words spill from her mouth as she starts to move her hips, the sensation of his cock sliding in and out of her almost maddening.

"At least when spring— comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead— I think I made you up inside my head."

And then words, words don't matter anymore.

She buries her head in his neck, her nails digging into his skin as she rocks against him. He moans, his lips pressing against the curve of her neck, her shoulder. She cries out softly when his teeth sink into her skin and finds herself only thinking about the next time, the assurance—

This is going to happen again.

"Lizzie," he breathes. "Fuck_, Lizzie_."

And when her mouth finds his again, hot and wet, and the sensation of his fingers pressing into her hips curls through her body, marking her—

She comes hard, the final thrust of his cock deep inside her driving the desperate awareness within her. She clings to him and him to her and there's this moment, this moment where there's an understanding of each other.

She tries breathing and it hurts.

His mouth moves against her shoulder, his tongue sliding against the mark he's made in her skin. She almost laughs, but doesn't. She moans instead.

His fingers brush her hair back, matted with sweat. "We should do this again," he murmurs, his voice sending shivers through her. "We should definitely do this again."

She laughs.

* * *

Weeks, maybe even months, they're like this.

"Here."

She looks up from her corner of the couch, wincing when a parcel hits the side of her arm. He smirks at her and she glares, daring him to make a remark about her coordination. He holds his hands up, but the smirk remains and moves to sit at her side.

She holds the parcel in her hand, wrapped loosely in newspaper and with masking tape, and, somehow, she just knows this is the first time in _years_ Red has bothered to wrap a gift on his own. Knows how much that means. The smile that curls onto her lips lingers, but she looks at him in partial surprise.

"Wrapped it yourself?" Her voice is dry, but her fingers smooth almost reverently against the ink-stained paper. Their relationship continues to evolve even with the change and she wonders what else will come.

With theatrics that are typical for him, he mock-frowns. "Appreciate the thought. I spent a lot of time wrapping."

"Clearly."

She carefully tears open the paper, ignoring the fact that he's taking to an odd silence. Watching her, unsure. Her eyes widen slightly as she holds the gift, a book, in her hand. It's a collection, a first edition copy, of John Keats' letters.

She bites her lip. "I—"

"It's educational," he offers nothing more than that. But she knows that he's watching her, waiting for her reaction.

She swallows, opening the book and flipping through the pages. She finds a marker in the midst of the book and shifts to the page, scanning the letter and taking in each word. There's a moment, where his hands cover hers and take the book from her.

He takes a deep breath, trying to make a decision. It's as if he's approaching an affirmation, a slight one, because, in essence, this is going too fast for them to approach another phase— It doesn't matter. It never did anyway.

His voice fills the room.

"You absorb me in spite of myself— you alone," he pauses and she brushes her fingers against his thigh, "for I look not forward with any pleasure to what is call'd being settled in the world; I tremble at domestic cares— yet for you I would meet them."

The words twist and fall even in the resonance of the echo. She finds herself smiling and then shaking her head, shifting to move closer to him. His arm slides around her shoulder and he kisses her forehead, allowing her to settle against his side.

"Idiot," she says affectionately.

He chuckles and kisses her again. "Here, I do something to—"

It's her words alone that start this again, stirring the moment between the two of them. She kisses his cheek and points to the book, her legs curling underneath her.

"Keep reading."

He does.

* * *

**A/N:**

**-**"Remember the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance." John Ruskin, _The Stones of Venice_

**-**"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway

**-**"I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed" Sylvia Plath, _Mad Girl's Love Song_

**-**"You absorb me in spite of myself— you alone…" John Keats to Fanny Brawne, July 15, 1819.


End file.
